Quote from: rgrove0172;924386If you zero prep you don't have that luxury and are forced to contend with whatever just happened to pop up.

I'm no zero-prepper, so I can only commiserate, but the issue here is chasing perfection. I struggle with this, too, but sometimes you just gotta let go.

These zero-prep guys understand that what happens at the table is 20% ideas/80% energy. If you bring the right energy, and the players reciprocate, everyone will be having too much fun to fret about the details.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924386In all honesty and with no ill intent whatsoever I need to ask how you Zero Preppers contend with ideas on how to improve something that you already blurted out to the players during play?

Im trying to imagine dropping a town in front of the players or something then a few minutes later or the next day or whatever realizing "Oh crap, it would have been so much better had I done this instead!" It doesn't bother you guys? You don't feel like you short changed the players because you didn't give yourself the time to consider options, repercussions, alternatives etc?

If you zero prep you don't have that luxury and are forced to contend with whatever just happened to pop up. Sometimes good, maybe sometimes great, but certainly sometimes not as good and worthy of a little more time and effort, if you had it.

Im just curious, don't want to pick a fight. How do you contend with this potentiality?

1: By adding on to later, if possible.

2: No. It doesnt bother me at all. Not one iota. Nada. Zip. If I get a neeto idea based on whats gone before then I can jot it down and use it later. Pre-prep in absolutely no way gets rid of that. You can prep for months and then after a session think "wow! I could have used X right there!" and the answer is... "And? So what? Why are you agonizing over an after the fact idea? Jot it down. Use it elsewhere later."
That and things like. Golly It sure would have been cewl if the end boss had been riding a dragon instead of a horse... sigh" are not necessarily things that would have improved the encounter. And after the fact are sometimes just needless fretting.

3 & 4: Every encounter and action does not, and SHOULD NOT be concentrated awesome every breath the PCs take. Im not "forced to contend" with anything because I dont worry about every little thing being perfectly fine tuned.

Asen, go ahead and quote me if you want.
You may have trained yourself specifically for Improv, which would surely point to where a lot of your Improv skill came from.  But, it's also true that people who do have a level of natural talent find it hard to imagine not having it.  There's a whole lot of guys who train as hard or harder than Michael Phelps and don't have 22 gold medals, or spend their whole lives doing an art, and never get to the highest level.

Quote from: Omega;9244091: By adding on to later, if possible.

2: No. It doesnt bother me at all. Not one iota. Nada. Zip. If I get a neeto idea based on whats gone before then I can jot it down and use it later. Pre-prep in absolutely no way gets rid of that. You can prep for months and then after a session think "wow! I could have used X right there!" and the answer is... "And? So what? Why are you agonizing over an after the fact idea? Jot it down. Use it elsewhere later."
That and things like. Golly It sure would have been cewl if the end boss had been riding a dragon instead of a horse... sigh" are not necessarily things that would have improved the encounter. And after the fact are sometimes just needless fretting.

3 & 4: Every encounter and action does not, and SHOULD NOT be concentrated awesome every breath the PCs take. Im not "forced to contend" with anything because I dont worry about every little thing being perfectly fine tuned.

Yeah, you can prep for 3 months and then 2 seconds in, get hit with a new idea.  The "D'oh!" moment can hit you no matter how much or little prep you put in.  Now sure, you could argue you mitigate that risk through more prep, and I would agree, but you're never immune.

Training, experience and perhaps some natural talent. That does seem to be the answer.

I can run several RPGs on the fly (especially horror) because I've devoured Lovecraft & Horror media for decades, run and played in dozens of RPGs campaigns, many LARPS and probably over five hundred one-shots, and I have devoted years to studying plots, character and writing techniques for film and novels. And I've designed and directed a half-dozen haunted houses.

But with all that, I still enjoy prepping. For me, I really enjoy walking through my creation in my mind before sharing it with players.

Quote from: Headless;924346If there is a random locked door in room 9 where is the key, it can't be in rooms 1-8 they already looked and it want there yet because the door and the need for it didn't exist.  Why does the beholder in room 13 tolerate the goblins?  What is the secret path the Drugar in room 3 use to get through the traps in room 18 does that leave clues?  Why don't the kobolds steel the treasure?

THIS is exactly why I love random dungeons.

For me, I get excited about answering those questions and figuring out the relationships and plots existing, aka weaving a pattern in the chaos. Where is that damn key? Did the Beholder eat it? What is the deal between the goblins? Are they the food? Are the kobolds here to steal the treasure? Or did they bring it here for safe keeping? And what's the secret behind the Drugar's ability to avoid the traps?

As Estar said, the random dungeon results are the starting point for creativity.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924386In all honesty and with no ill intent whatsoever I need to ask how you Zero Preppers contend with ideas on how to improve something that you already blurted out to the players during play?

If possible, weave it into the game.

Here's something that happened a few years ago:

A few years ago, a convention CoC GM no-showed and I offered to run something on the fly. It was a "standard haunted house", but I put it on a boat instead, and of course, the boat was sinking. Thus, I declared the PCs were Somali pirates. I had no character sheets and half the players never played CoC. I told everyone to grab some food and be back in 10 mins while I whipped up my adventure...and created a chargen system based on Traveller ('cuz faster than CoC) and away we went.

I had the PCs attacked by a swarm of rats. One player freaked out because he doesn't know how the rats found them because he had specifically told me his PC was looking for evidence of rats, let alone a hundred of them...

I had totally forgot that!!

So I said, what rats? They looked at me confused. Then I said, there's no rats here. You are all bitten and bloody, but there's no rats here.

With that, I flipped a switch on the entire adventure, adding a whole dream component, making the PCs wonder what was real or not, and my "haunted boat" took on several surreal aspects.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924386You don't feel like you short changed the players because you didn't give yourself the time to consider options, repercussions, alternatives etc?

I don't worry if I know everyone had fun. In my post-game thoughts, I can always make notes for future adventures.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924386Im just curious, don't want to pick a fight.

Wimp!

Quote from: Harg of the City Afar;924399These zero-prep guys understand that what happens at the table is 20% ideas/80% energy. If you bring the right energy, and the players reciprocate, everyone will be having too much fun to fret about the details.

Agreed, and that goes for high prep too.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924386In all honesty and with no ill intent whatsoever I need to ask how you Zero Preppers contend with ideas on how to improve something that you already blurted out to the players during play?

It depends. Does it contradict what I said, or does it clarify it? I usually tend to give information in small parcels, and the players might have to chase for the next one, so I do have the option to clarify and expand.
If it would contradict it, then no. My first idea is what it is, even if it would seem more logical. Remember the part that "things don't change because of players' decisions, unless the players take actions to change them"? Well, things don't change because I changed my mind, either!

Regarding logic - it would be much more logical if the streets of some cities had logical ways of numbering, but as it is, they're numbered in the order that they were built. Deal with it, if you visit one of those. It ain't going to change because you arrived there and ranted about it.

Also, that's chasing the imaginary "better". What if you come up with an even better idea?
Me, I remember the statement that "the better is the enemy of the good", and go with the good.

QuoteIm just curious, don't want to pick a fight. How do you contend with this potentiality?

By remembering that the real world isn't optimised to be the most interesting version of itself that it could, and it's exactly those "flaws" that make it so much more interesting than fiction.

Quote from: CRKrueger;924414Asen, go ahead and quote me if you want.
You may have trained yourself specifically for Improv, which would surely point to where a lot of your Improv skill came from.  But, it's also true that people who do have a level of natural talent find it hard to imagine not having it.  There's a whole lot of guys who train as hard or harder than Michael Phelps and don't have 22 gold medals, or spend their whole lives doing an art, and never get to the highest level.

So I shall:).

I didn't train myself for Improv, because I didn't know Improv exists back when I was devising exercises for improving my GMing. I found out my exercises had prepared me somewhat for Improv, too, but that was just to the level of "somewhat talented beginner". Believe me, the guy who had passed a newbie course already and wanted to refresh was head and shoulders better.
Of course, GMing=/=improv, they do share some useful skills, but then some GMing skills are an impediment to improv (the habit of critically evaluating the feedback of other players was the biggest offender).

And I know quite well what "not having the talent" is. My first sessions as a GM are something I still remember and draw conclusions from. Mostly in the way of "that's something I should no longer do"!
So no, I wasn't a "natural" in any of my hobbies, except reading. And I don't know about reading, either, since I simply got very early instruction;).

For me, the art of zero prep is all about mastering the charade.

Many GMs think too much from their perspective, always forgetting that players have a very limited amount of information compared to them. Therefore, if you just manage to make the adventure feel prepped, it will make no difference if it really is.

Yes, zero prep is a lot about the energy you bring to the table. Zero prep is about using clichés efficiently and subverting them when too obvious. Zero prep is also about ad-hoc descriptions that have just the right amount of detail to make the world seem lived in. It's avoiding the pitfall of having a world being built around the adventurers.

Quote from: Nerzenjäger;924431For me, the art of zero prep is all about mastering the charade.

Many GMs think too much from their perspective, always forgetting that players have a very limited amount of information compared to them. Therefore, if you just manage to make the adventure feel prepped, it will make no difference if it really is.

Yes, zero prep is a lot about the energy you bring to the table. Zero prep is about using clichés efficiently and subverting them when too obvious. Zero prep is also about ad-hoc descriptions that have just the right amount of detail to make the world seem lived in. It's avoiding the pitfall of having a world being built around the adventurers.

Bingo - especially the last sentence:)!
Well, I'm not partial of cliches, but they're being repeated because they work. And you can always put a spin on them if you know the matter in more detail;).

Quote from: Edgewise;924299I'm particularly interested in Sine Nomine games, but I wonder how you could deliver the same level of quality for some kinds of games with lots of improvisations.

Basically, you can't. Proper prep is always going to add quality. Because proper prep, by definition, is adding elements that can't be improvised at the table.

What low-prep experimentation reveals to many people, however, is that they AREN'T getting a quality boost from the type of prep they've been doing. That can be a really valuable lesson, if for no other reason than because it will let you spend your normal prep time on the stuff that DOES increase value.

QuoteIf I can't achieve anything like this with sandbox play, then what am I getting in its place?

For me it was more frequent gaming. Low-prep games allowed me to run an open table that let me basically play an RPG whenever I wanted to while vastly expanding the circle of people I game with. They also allowed me to run a second ongoing campaign (which I would normally not have been able to support with my normal prep load).

Quote from: rgrove0172;924333Zero prep for a contained, focused adventure in a dungeon is one thing. Zero prep for a world spanning, intricately plotted, multi-setting adventure with dozens of different locales, NPCs, cultures, historical background, diplomatic intrigue, sub plots and interlaced mini adventures, and so on is another thing entirely.

Yeah. I find dungeons a lot more difficult to run on the fly than other sorts of scenarios. I mean, they need literally everything other types of scenarios need, but then they also need an effective map.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924386Im trying to imagine dropping a town in front of the players or something then a few minutes later or the next day or whatever realizing "Oh crap, it would have been so much better had I done this instead!" It doesn't bother you guys?

Sure. I know that moment. But prep doesn't actually eliminate those moments. It just moves you to the next set of such moments. No matter how much effort you put into something, there's always some new layer or improvement or interconnection or theme that could have been done better.

For example, one of the largest and most ambitious campaigns I have ever run was Eternal Lies for Trail of Cthulhu. In addition to the 400 pages of the published campaign, I prepped 130,000 words of additional content, 300+ props, and 150+ diorama elements. At the end of the campaign -- which was a huge, amazing success -- I ended up with a list of two dozen things I'd like to have improved (and that doesn't count stuff that arose during play that, after the fact, I realized could have been handled more effectively). Stuff like, "It would have been more effective to incorporate the mechanics used for explosives in the final act of the campaign into the earlier sequences so that the players would be familiar with those mechanics for the finale." and "I think there would be a lot of value in having three hotels prepped for each locale." and "I think there's more and subtler foreshadowing that can happen in the insane asylum."

And if I'd taken a little longer the first time and done all of those things? (Even assuming that I would have recognized it before play began.) There would probably be another set of revelations to be discovered.

Quote from: Spinachcat;924418THIS is exactly why I love random dungeons.

For me, I get excited about answering those questions and figuring out the relationships and plots existing, aka weaving a pattern in the chaos. Where is that damn key? Did the Beholder eat it? What is the deal between the goblins? Are they the food? Are the kobolds here to steal the treasure? Or did they bring it here for safe keeping? And what's the secret behind the Drugar's ability to avoid the traps?

Here's something that happened a few years ago:

A few years ago, a convention CoC GM no-showed and I offered to run something on the fly. It was a "standard haunted house", but I put it on a boat instead, and of course, the boat was sinking. Thus, I declared the PCs were Somali pirates.......

I had the PCs attacked by a swarm of rats. One player freaked out because he doesn't know how the rats found them because he had specifically told me his PC was looking for evidence of rats, let alone a hundred of them...

I had totally forgot that!!

So I said, what rats? They looked at me confused. Then I said, there's no rats here. You are all bitten and bloody, but there's no rats here.

With that, I flipped a switch on the entire adventure, adding a whole dream component, making the PCs wonder what was real or not, and my "haunted boat" took on several surreal

So cool adventure glad it ran well and good job for 15 minuets or less of prep.  But here's my issue.  Player action is negated.  In the above example it didn't matter that one player had been on the look out for rats, the random chart the DMwas consulting (in this case subconscious inspiration) said rats so here they are, only they are spooky rats.  

In the further above example, the players can't find the secret of the Drugars ability to avoid the traps because they don't find the Durgar until after they have navigated the traps.  It doesn't matter how they look they won't find it, it's not there.  
Maybe I  getting hung up on small stuff but random seems to have to same problem as rail road.

Quote from: CRKrueger;924343Estar has a good point, Headless.  For example, I ran so much Shadowrun in Seattle, give me a set of PCs, and I can come with a run on the fly because I've completely internalized the Setting, System, NPCs over years of play.  That's not Zero Prep, it's "Bag O' Stuff", "Setting Mastery", "Prep via Play" whatever you want to call it.

I think the majority falls into this category.

Quote from: Headless;924452So cool adventure glad it ran well and good job for 15 minuets or less of prep.  But here's my issue.  Player action is negated.  In the above example it didn't matter that one player had been on the look out for rats, the random chart the DM was consulting (in this case subconscious inspiration) said rats so here they are, only they are spooky rats.  

In the further above example, the players can't find the secret of the Drugars ability to avoid the traps because they don't find the Durgar until after they have navigated the traps.  It doesn't matter how they look they won't find it, it's not there.  
Maybe I  getting hung up on small stuff but random seems to have to same problem as rail road.

This is what I know about the Zero Preppers, their games are not nearly as good as they think they are.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;924433Proper prep is always going to add quality. Because proper prep, by definition, is adding elements that can't be improvised at the table.

What low-prep experimentation reveals to many people, however, is that they AREN'T getting a quality boost from the type of prep they've been doing. That can be a really valuable lesson, if for no other reason than because it will let you spend your normal prep time on the stuff that DOES increase value.

That's an interesting statement.  Do you have a short list or examples of things that you think would fall into each category - "Prep that adds value"/"Prep you could easily improv"?

Quote from: finarvyn;924314This is clearly where the style of play and the intent of the adventure have to be both taken into account. I can zero-prep a basic dungeon crawl, but if every adventure was like that then gaming would get stale in a hurry. I have to mix those sessions in with large-prep sessions, such as professional modules or adventures created by myself. Your choice of DCC adventures is a great one, by the way, as I think that the newer ones (the DCC RPG adventures, not those written for d20) are particularly creative and innovative.

Agree, a mix of adventure approaches works best over the long term, i find.

Quote from: Sommerjon;924467I think the majority falls into this category.


This is what I know about the Zero Preppers, their games are not nearly as good as they think they are.

1: You thought wrong.

2: They are better than you "know"... Because you are a moron.

Quote from: Sommerjon;924467I think the majority falls into this category.

Quote from: Omega;9244881: You thought wrong.

Zero-preppers aren't in the minority? I'd put money on that one.  
Or do you mean that people who aren't really zero-prepping but are relying on decades of experience and internalized goodies don't refer to themselves as zero-preppers, so someone who self-identifies as a zero-prepper actually is one?  That I can see.  I certainly don't refer to myself as that.

Quote from: Sommerjon;924467This is what I know about the Zero Preppers, their games are not nearly as good as they think they are.

Quote from: Omega;9244882: They are better than you "know"... Because you are a moron.

Hmm, he may be overstating the case, I'd probably put it as "despite being wildly successful, and loved by their players, their games are not as good as they would have been with prep."

Most experienced GMs I know are harder on their own performance and game then the players are, so hard to get any objective metrics, of course, someone would have to shift styles without letting the players know and see what feedback they get.